


Winter Break

by isabeau25



Series: Comfortember [4]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Comfortember 2020, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27693223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isabeau25/pseuds/isabeau25
Summary: The team find themselves snowed in in a little town in the middle of nowhere.
Relationships: Eliot Spencer & Team Leverage
Series: Comfortember [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2012851
Comments: 27
Kudos: 72





	1. Coincidence?

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, I haven't written the rest of this story yet, and I'm not sure when I'll have a chance to finish it, but I thought the first scene was a good fit for the [Comfortember](https://comfortember.tumblr.com/post/628381629921017856/comfortember) prompt: exhaustion, so I'm going to go head and post it. 
> 
> The rating is solely for a very tired Eliot having a bit of a foul mouth.

Eliot saw Hardison slump down into one of the hard terminal seats to his left and start punching away on his phone and didn’t even side eye him. There should have been at least a little spike of adrenaline in seeing him there when he definitely shouldn’t have been, but instead there was just a bone deep weariness that came with the knowledge that for Hardison to be there something had to be very wrong.

“I’m so sorry, sir,” the woman at the gate counter did her best to sound apologetic, but it was obvious she was just frazzled; two massive storm cells had re-routed seven flights to the little Podunk airport, and there were more people crowded into the terminals than the place probably saw in two or three months, “there’s just no way to tell when we’ll be able to start rebooking outgoing flights.”

“No worries, darling,” Eliot fell back into an easy drawl, too tired for much else, “can’t control the weather.”

It hurt slinging his bag over his shoulder and reaching down to grab his second bag was almost too much effort to be worth it, but he did anyway, with an easy smile at the gate worker and no sign of discomfort.

When he got to Hardison, he let his bags fall heavily to the ground, then dropped himself into the chair beside him, still not bothering to look at him.

“Who else is here?” he leaned forward, elbows on his knees and head bowed.

“Whole team,” Hardison continued tapping away on his phone.

“Fucking hell,” Eliot rubbed a hand over his face.

“You alright, man?” Hardison finally glanced over at him.

“What have you checked so far?” Eliot ignored the concern.

It went without saying that all five of them being re-routed to the same airport in the middle of nowhere couldn’t be a coincidence, especially given the fact that the last job had been rough enough for them to take the precaution of booking five different flights on their way out, with the plan to regroup back at HQ gradually over the next three or four days.

“Running checks on air control, pilots, and flight staff,” Hardison offered, “haven’t found anything yet.”

“Can you get into the air control logs?” Eliot forced down a shiver; the hoodie he was wearing was no match for how cold it was outside and how poorly the terminal was heated.

The way every movement sent sharp pain through his shoulder though made it very clear to him that it wasn’t worth it to dig his coat out of his bag. The over-the-counter pain killers he had taken right before his flight had long worn off, and what he really needed was a place to hole up so he could take a round of the prescription strength stuff and get some rest.

That ship, it seemed, had sailed, though. And then been sunk under a foot of snow.

“Here,” Hardison handed his phone over to him, all the officially logged information on the seven rerouted flights on display.

Eliot flipped through the information, checking and cross checking all of it. He forced himself to go more slowly than he usually would, aware of just how tired he was and how easy it would be to miss something or make a mistake, and mistakes just weren’t an option where the team’s safety was at stake. 

By the time he had listened to the exchanges between the tower and the pilots for all seven flights on Hardison’s earbuds, Nate had appeared, dropping down in the chair on Eliot’s other side, a paper cup of questionable coffee in one hand.

“Where are Parker and Sophie?” Eliot asked, his unease at their absence growing now that Nate had shown up and they still hadn’t; he knew they could take care of themselves, but that didn’t stop him from worrying.

“Trying to find a coffee stand that will make a decent cappuccino and let Parker put half a bottle of syrup in her hot chocolate,” Nate relaxed back in his chair, not looking particularly distressed by their current situation, “you want anything?”

“No,” even the idea of coffee made his stomach roll; he knew he needed to eat something to settle it, but eating sounded like a terrible idea at the moment.

“Find anything yet?” Nate looked at Hardison over Eliot’s hunched back.

“Nothing,” Hardison shook his head, “plus I still can’t find us anywhere to stay. Everything is full.”

“Eliot?” Nate asked, glancing down at his phone when Sophie texted him a warning that Parker had managed to put six extra pumps of mocha in her hot chocolate without the barista noticing.

Nate wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or terrified. He settled on asking Sophie to grab a bottle of Gatorade for Eliot, then slipped his phone back into his pocket. 

“Nothing,” Eliot handed Hardison’s phone back to him, then slumped forward again, “three of the re-routes were requested by the pilots, four of them were made by air control. They tried to re-route Sophie’s flight to a larger airport, but the storm shifted, and they had to send it here. The pilot on your flight was retired air force. He kept using air force codes and the tower was giving him shit about it. Hardison’s pilot kept flipping his call sign and his co-pilot kept cutting in to correct it. Re-routes all make sense for the way the two storm fronts are shaping up.”

“What does that mean?” Hardison glanced at Nate over Eliot’s back, a slight tip of his head in the hitter’s direction.

“It means that there’s nothing there,” Nate dropped his free hand to the back of Eliot’s neck and began kneading, “if they were trying to pull something, they would have made sure everything was perfect in the logs in case someone went back to review them. Which means everything is pointing to this just being a really weird coincidence.”

“There is no way this is a coincidence,” Eliot grumbled, grateful to have some of the tension finally ease out of his shoulders under Nate’s hand.

“The world is a strange place,” Sophie’s very expensive and highly inappropriate for snow storms shoes appeared in Eliot’s line of sight, “you look awful, sweetheart.”

She pressed a kiss to the top of his head before going to sit on Hardison’s other side, leaning over his shoulder and sipping her coffee as she watched him continued to try to find them a place to stay.

“Do you have any real shoes with you?” Eliot gripped at her.

“I’ll have you know, I could buy two sets of those fancy kitchen knives you love so much with what these shoes cost,” Sophie said in mock offense, “but I do have weather appropriate shoes if that’s what you’re asking. I’ll dig them out once we decide on our plan.”

Parker planted herself on the floor at Eliot’s feet and stared up at him, the line of chocolate on her top lip a clear indication that she had already managed to down her hot chocolate. Eliot just raised his eyebrows at her. He couldn’t deny, he felt better having all four of them close, knowing that at least they were in reach if something happened.

“Our plan is to find someplace to stay to wait out this storm,” Nate continued rubbing Eliot’s neck, “if the weather report is right, we could be stuck here for the next three or four days, and I don’t think any of us want to spend that long sleeping on airport benches.”

“Whatever we end up doing, we should stick together,” Eliot insisted.

Eliot knew he was paranoid, and he knew sometimes that paranoia was justified and sometimes it wasn’t. The problem was, it didn’t matter if there was actually someone out to get them, or he was just tired and his brain was defaulting to ‘danger,’ it all felt the same. It felt like his team was in trouble, and he needed to do something, needed to make sure they were safe.

“We are definitely sticking together,” Hardison grumbled, “I’ll be lucky if I can find even one room for us.”

“You hurt your shoulder again,” Parker frowned up at Eliot.

Nate’s hand went abruptly still on the back of his neck, and Eliot glared down at Parker. He had been careful about not showing the injury, but this was Parker, and her observation skills were frighteningly good. Her sense of tact, not so much.

“I just dislocated it,” Eliot did his best to sound dismissive, “it’s fine.”

“When did that happen?” Nate demanded.

“Does it matter?” Eliot was not interested in having this argument again.

“I need to know when you’re hurt on a job,” Nate squeezed his neck briefly, then went back to kneading at it.

“It’s fine. Popped it back in, no problem. It wasn’t worth throwing Sophie’s exit off for,” Eliot should really have straightened up and pulled away, but he couldn’t muster the energy to, “it happens… sometimes.”

He caught himself before he could say “all the time,” partly because that was definitely the wrong thing to say right now and partly because it wasn’t really true. There was permanent damage in his left shoulder that made it slightly more prone to dislocating, but it didn’t happen all the time.

“Tell me next time it happens,” Nate pulled his hand away, and it was everything Eliot could do not to follow it.

“You want me to tell you next time I skin my knee too?” the hitter asked peevishly.

“Yes!” the rest of his team chimed in.

“You’re all ridiculous,” Eliot grumbled at them, but he couldn’t help the quiet warmth that pooled in his chest.

“You should wear a sling after you dislocate it,” Parker leaned her head on his knee, still looking up at him, “it makes it feel better.”

“I don’t have a sling,” Eliot pointed out, “it’s fine.”

“You have pain meds,” Parker reached back to drag one of his bags closer.

“Need to eat something before I take any more,” Eliot used his foot to push the bag away from her; he would definitely end up retching if he tried to take even the over the counter stuff right now, and he’d rather not, “leave that alone. We need to figure out our next move.”

“You’re going to drink this,” Nate opened the Gatorade bottle Sophie had slipped him before handing it to Eliot, “and we’re going to have to think outside the box if we want to find a place to sleep tonight.”

Eliot glared at the radioactive yellow color, but took it anyway. Nate wasn’t wrong; he needed the fluids. He should have had Sophie grab him some tea though. Even crappy airport tea would have been better than Gatorade. He forced himself to finally sit up so he could drink, and Nate’s hand fell back to the nap of his neck and started kneading again. Eliot leaned back into it under the guise of settling into his chair more comfortably.

“We could buy a house,” Sophie suggested, only half joking.

“We could steal a house,” Parker grinned, head back to resting on Eliot’s knee, “that would be faster. Also more fun.”

“I could kick someone out of a room,” Hardison squinted at his phone, “but that seems like kind of a shitty thing to do.”

“Oh! Find someone who’s a jerk and kick them out,” Parker shifted so she could look at Hardison over Eliot’s knee, “then it would be okay, right Nate?”

“It would be… less not okay,” Nate offered, clearly amused, “but let’s call that plan D.”

“Can stealing a house be plan A?” Parker asked eagerly.

“No,” Nate snorted, “but it’s definitely ranking above sleeping in the airport for three days.”

“Sleeping in the airport better be plan Z.” Sophie huffed.

“No,” Hardison grinned, “plan Z has zombies.”

Eliot sipped at his Gatorade slowly, waiting to gauge how it would settle on an empty stomach, and tried to prioritize what they needed to do. Security and the team’s safety was always his first priority, but he needed to get his brain to let that go for a little bit so he could figure out what they would need to manage being snowed in in a tiny town for a week, because Nate’s estimate of three days was generous if the weather reports were even half right.

His brain was not cooperating. The airport was overcrowded with angry people who were looking at being stuck there for days with no other options, and every aggressive gesture and raised voice had his eyes jumping to the person, assessing the level of threat, then skittering away to the next one. There could be a threat there somewhere; the five of them ending up together some place they hadn’t intended to be felt like a trap.

He needed to get them out of here. That seemed like a good first step.

“Do we have a car?” he interrupted Hardison’s detailing of plan Z, which he had heard way too many times.

“Yeah, I reserved us a van as soon as I got in,” Hardison confirmed, “ain’t fancy, but they’re supposed to put the chains on for us.”

“Maybe we should just get out of here then,” Eliot gave the half full Gatorade bottle a disgusted look, “we should aim for getting enough supplies for all of us for at least a week, just in case, and it’s early enough that the grocery stores might still be open if the blizzard hasn’t shut them down.”

Somewhere behind them a disgruntled businessman got unnecessarily loud with airport personal and one of the meandering security guards started to make his way towards the disturbance. Nate felt Eliot tense under his hand and shift his weight to a position it would be easier for him to get up in a hurry from. Parker was starting to look a little twitchy too, although being pressed up against Eliot’s knee and at least partially sheltered from the chaos of the terminal was probably helping.

“I’m not keen on the idea of driving out into a blizzard with no final destination in mind,” Sophie frowned.

“Living out of a van with five other people and freezing my ass off for a week,” Hardison flipped through web pages faster than Sophie could follow, “that better be somewhere after plan Z.”

Eliot knew they weren’t wrong, but Parker was hugging the leg she was resting against like a teddy bear, and he would have to step on her if he had to get up quickly to deal with trouble. It felt like the better option was to go sort out their next move behind locked doors, even if they were just car doors.

Nate gave the back of Eliot’s neck a reassuring squeeze, and Eliot pulled his ankle back, partially trapping Parker between his leg and the chair. He gave her a tired smile when she looked up at him and pretended not to notice when she started untying his boot lace. She would retie it using whatever her favorite knot of the week was.

“We’ll call sleeping in the van plan E,” Nate offered.

“That seems awfully high on the list,” Sophie complained.

“Well, then we better come up with a plan A,” Nate scoffed, “and Eliot’s right, we’re going to have to make a supply run and try to stock up. It would be better not to have to make too many trips out if the roads are bad,” he pulled his notepad and pen out of his inner pocket and passed it to Eliot, “the grown-ups don’t want to live on orange soda and coco puffs for a week, so this one’s all you.”

“Put coco puffs on the list,” Parker stage whispered to Eliot.

He snorted softly, but put it down first. He was acutely aware that Nate was trying to give him some kind of distraction to focus on, and he wanted to be more irritated by it than he was, but focusing on something besides the crowd and being able to organize his thoughts on paper did actually help.

It took a surprising amount of food to feed five people for a week, plus the logistics of possibly losing power, and all the other things they would need, things to cook food in, plates and utensils of some kind if the place they were staying didn’t have any, restocking the med kit, taking into account that he really didn’t feel like cooking and the rest of team’s cooking skills ranged from “probably won’t kill anyone” to “definitely will make something explode.”

“Isn’t this hiking country?” Nate asked suddenly.

“Unfortunately,” Hardison grumbled, “I’m going to go sleep on the floor in the corner over there before I’m going to camp in this though.”

“Summer vacation rentals,” Eliot filled in before Nate could, “they’ll be closed up for winter, so they shouldn’t be booked. Just make sure they have their utilities turned on.”

Hardison perked up at the idea and started searching on his phone, Sophie leaning eagerly over his shoulder again.

“Finish this,” Nate picked up the bottle of Gatorade from where Eliot had set it on the arm rest and held it out to him, “or I’m hunting down a bottle of Pedialyte for you.”

“You know,” Eliot set the pad on his knee and took the bottle from him reluctantly, “Pedialyte actually tastes better.”

“Isn’t that like baby food?” Parker peered curiously at the list, noting with satisfaction that Eliot had put not only coco puffs but also fruity pebbles and frosted flakes on it for her.

“Yeah,” Nate confirmed, “so don’t be a baby and drink your Gatorade.”

“Got one,” Hardison announced, “a lovely summer chalet with two bedrooms and a sleeping loft, full kitchen, and real wood fireplace. Also, on the grid and utilities running. It’s closed for the winter, so no rental contacts listed.”

“Can we steal it?” Parker asked eagerly.

“Let’s try just renting it first,” Nate shook his head, “see if you can get a contact number for the owners.”

“If?” Hardison snorted, “like I couldn’t do this in my sleep.”

“Stop bragging and give me the phone,” Sophie tried to snatch the phone from him as soon as the number was up, “what are we doing?”

“Family vaca,” Nate ignored Eliot’s grumble from beside him.

They called the particular grouping of IDs “family vaca” because Eliot got angry when they called it “Eliot needs to go to the ER and Nate needs durable power of attorney for him,” although to be fair, there were other ways they used this particular arrangement.

“I’m so glad I reached you,” Sophie started talking before the person on the other end of the line could even ask who was there, giving Eliot a wink as she pulled out her friendliest southern drawl.

Eliot rolled his eyes and began adjusting the list now that he knew they would have an actual kitchen. Just how well outfitted a rental’s kitchen would be could vary widely, but at least they shouldn’t need dishes and utensils, and if they were lucky, it would have a gas stove and they’d still be able to cook if the power went out.

“Add marshmallows,” Parker demanded and let go of his leg to reach for his bag.

“Stay out of my stuff,” Eliot used his foot to push the bag away from her again.

“You need your jacket,” Parker swatted at his shin, “I know you had the one with the fuzz on the inside with you; you wore it when we were casing the warehouse.”

“Other bag,” Eliot gave in, then shoved Parker gently with his foot, “don’t rearrange anything in there. It’s all exactly where I want it.”

“You always pack your bags the same,” Parker complained as she unzipped the second bag, “it makes finding things so boring.”

“It’s…,” Eliot broke off, distracted by two security guards rushing past them, heading in the direction of the meager food court.

“Almost out of here,” Nate patted his knee, “once we’ve got the cabin worked out, we’ll hit up a grocery store, then get settled for the night.”

“I don’t like any of this, Nate,” Eliot frowned at him.

“I know,” Nate agreed easily, “it’s a lot of coincidence, but it’s also a lot of moving pieced that can’t be controlled or predicted, and we do need to get moving if we don’t actually want to spend the next week stuck in the airport.”

“Coat,” Parker held up Eliot’s jacket, one of his beanies firmly on her head.

He suspected he would not be getting that beanie back, but that was alright; he had another one somewhere and Parker would need a hat once they got out of the airport. He reached for his jacket, but Parker snatched it back.

“Let me help,” she insisted, “it’s not good to raise your arm over your shoulder right after you dislocate it.”

“You know, this is not the first time I’ve done this,” Eliot let her help despite his protest, “I know how to deal with it.”

“Yeah, but you don’t half the time,” Hardison grumbled.

“If I ain’t dead then I delt with it,” Eliot glared.

“Sophie says it’s not funny to joke about that when you’re hurt,” Parker zipped up the jacket for him despite him trying to brush her hands away.

Sophie glanced over at them at her name, but continued her cheerful conversation with the rental owner, giving them little more than a raised eyebrow.

“Well, then, when is it funny to joke about it?” Nate asked, clearly bemused.

Sophie reached across both Hardison and Eliot to swat him, never once breaking the steady chatter of her conversation.

“Hat too,” Parker pulled a beanie over Eliot’s head, then tucked his hair back so it wasn’t in his face, “it’s snowing really hard. Did you put ice packs on your list?”

Eliot let her snatch the pad from him, although the fancy pen she started adding to it with looked like it was Sophie’s. He had not put ice packs on the list, but he had planned to grab a couple if they had any, along with more Tylenol and ibuprofen. He had some in his med kit, but if all five of them were going to be dipping into the kit, it would be better to stock up.

“You are just the sweetest thing,” Sophie cooed at the phone, “don’t you bother with coming out in this dreadful weather. We can manage just fine.”

Sophie hung up and grinned at the team, “the house is ours for as long as we need it. There’s a lock box on the porch with the key.”

“I can just pick the lock,” Parker protested as she pushed herself to her feet.

“It’s okay to use a key sometimes Parker,” Nate stood and started gathering up their bags, “maybe change it up a little every now and then.”

“I don’t like keys in lock boxes,” Eliot shoved himself up, “too easy to get to and copy.”

He was dizzy for a second, just long enough for Hardison to put a hand on the small of his back. Eliot stepped away from him and no one said anything. He just needed to eat something, preferably something that wouldn’t make him sick, that was all.

Hardison snatched up his bags before he could grab them, and if he hadn’t been feeling so lousy, he would have kicked him in the shin for it.


	2. Fussing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate has to choose between supervising a shopping spree or supervising a grumpy hitter. He definitely chooses the lesser evil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Whumpybliss on tumblr for being my beta for this chapter!

"I know what you're trying to do."

Eliot's glare was less impressive than usual, but Nate still would have bet his money on him. Not that he wouldn't always bet on Eliot, and with things much more valuable to him than money.

"Trying to get you to eat saltines, so you don't throw up when you take the prescription strength anti-inflammatories I know you have in your bag?" Nate waved the open sleeve of crackers in front of the hitter.

"Stop fussing," Eliot snapped and snatched the sleeve out of Nate's hand.

Now that Parker had pointed it out, Nate could clearly see Eliot was favoring his left arm. Or, possibly because Parker had pointed it out, Eliot was putting less effort into hiding it.

"They shouldn't be in there alone," Eliot pulled a few crackers out of the sleeve and shoved it back at Nate.

"They're not alone," Nate swapped the sleeve for a water bottle from the grocery bag at his feet, "they have each other. We might be living off of orange soda and Trix for the next two weeks, but I think they'll get each other out of the store in one piece."

Eliot gave him a dubious look but refrained from talking with his mouth full.

"Anyway, I'm listening," Nate tapped the comm he had slipped into his ear.

"Where's my…?" Eliot frowned and tried to reach behind the seat for his bag, wincing hard at the twisting motion.

"Stop it," Nate thumped his side lightly with the back of his hand, "I've got them. Parker hasn't managed to convince Sophie that Froot Loops are both a vegetable and a fruit, but Sophie is giving her tips on being persuasive, and Hardison doesn't know the difference between a zucchini and a cucumber, but one of them has made it into the basket."

"How have they made it this far without dying of malnutrition?" Eliot let his head flop back against the headrest.

"Cereal is fortified," Nate said dryly and poked Eliot with the water bottle, "which bag are your meds in?"

"It can wait until we get to the cabin," Eliot grabbed the offending bottle away without opening his eyes.

Nate didn't have to wrangle an injured Eliot often. Most of the time, he was more than capable of managing his own injuries. When he wasn't, Nate usually let Parker take the lead in poking and prodding while he helped Hardison track down whatever medical help their hitter needed.

Parker needed to burn off some energy, though, and Nate would rather supervise a cranky Eliot than his team on a shopping spree. He had trailed Eliot through the first aid aisle, listened to him mutter over spices and knives on the baking aisle, and then dragged him back to the van with saltines and water bottles in hand.

"Just take the anti-inflammatory," Nate argued, "it won't make you drowsy, and the longer you wait, the less well they'll work."

"Stop. Fussing." Eliot growled, somehow managing to drink his water angrily.

Nate was always impressed by how Eliot could make the most mundane tasks look threatening. Luckily for him and the rest of the team, Nate was not easily intimidated.

"Just for the sake of argument..." Nate started.

"No," Eliot said flatly.

"We're stuck in the car until Hardison picks a shampoo. Humor me," Nate ignored Hardison's protests over the comm about his sensitive scalp.

"They need to hurry," Eliot groused, 'the snow is getting worse."

"Right," Nate agreed and held the sleeve of saltines out to Eliot again. He was disproportionately pleased when the hitter grabbed a few more without protest, "so let's just say there really is some shadowy figure waiting behind the curtain to get us…"

Eliot raised an eyebrow at that, probably cross-checking his mental list of people who matched that description, but Nate ignored him.

"And they orchestrated stranding the five us in this specific tiny town, in the middle of nowhere, by waiting until we were both split up on five different planes, and there was a massive storm front to force our flights here…"

"Look, I know…" Eliot rubbed his eyes tiredly.

"Which is possible," Nate continued to ignore him, "highly unlikely, but possible. After all, shady figures are usually good at seizing opportunity when they see it. So let's say all of that is true. What's their next move? Where do they expect us to be?"

Eliot frowned before reluctantly admitting, "They expect us to be stranded, at the airport or one of the hotels."

"Right," Nate nodded, "and even if they somehow anticipated us renting a summer house, it would be almost impossible to control which summer house we rented. Hardison must have skimmed through a half dozen search pages worth before we went after this one."

Eliot's frown deepened as he worked the problem and thought how he would have managed something like this from the other side. Nate let him be for a minute because he was still eating crackers while he thought, seemingly without noticing.

"There are ways they could stack the deck in their favor," he finally said slowly. "Knowing what we would want in a place to lay low, making it available even though it looked unavailable, monitoring Hardison for the search criteria he was using, then populating it with multiple properties that they have control of."

"Possible," Nate conceded, "ridiculously elaborate and unnecessarily complicated, but possible."

"So, one of your plans, basically," Eliot snorted.

"I don't have the patience to wait on mother nature," Nate let the jab slide, "my point is, the best thing we can do in this situation is not be where we're most likely to be. The rest, we'll just have to deal with as it comes."

"I know that. It's just…" Eliot just looked worn out now, tired of having to run through every scenario and possibility for every given moment.

Nate had figured out fairly early on that Eliot's paranoia was rooted in both a lot of experience and a lot of trauma. It meant they would be idiots to ignore him when he said something was wrong (and Nate had, unfortunately, been that idiot on more than one occasion, although he tried not to be these days), but they also needed to be a second check on those things for him sometimes, because he could always work his way around to those perceived threats being possible, even if they weren't probable.

It had gotten a lot better over the years, and the team had gotten better at finding ways to help him deal with it when it did come up. There was never a perfect solution, but they were more than happy to settle for an imperfect one if it made things at least a little better.

"And we'll deal with everything a lot better if you just take your diclofenac," Nate cut him off again, "so what bag is it in?"

"Duffel," Eliot conceded defeat finally, "they really do need to hurry."

"I know," Nate turned around and started sifting through the bags they had tossed into the third row of seats, "they're almost done."

Parker had been sitting in the back row, and she had rearranged the luggage that hadn't fit in the trunk to make a nest of sorts for herself around the middle seat. Nate had to practically crawl over the back of the middle row to reach Eliot's duffel bag, and he only felt a little bad for messing up her carefully crafted arrangement.

Eliot carried prescription meds with him and had for as long as Nate had known him. He had worried at first about the bottle of oxi that was always packed in the hitter's personal medkit. In hindsight, he could see the hypocrisy of constantly watching Eliot for signs of opioid addiction while simultaneously getting blackout drunk on a regular basis.

It had only taken a couple months for that concern to shift from Eliot taking too many painkillers to getting Eliot to take them at all. Two years in, and Nate had been worrying about why Eliot felt like jobs would leave him in enough pain on a regular enough basis that he would need to always have that level of painkiller with him. These days, Eliot and meds were mostly a bargaining act, a give and take informed by context and where Eliot's head was at at the given moment.

Oxi made him disoriented and dizzy; he wouldn't take it if he didn't feel safe. Diclofenac made him nauseous if he didn't take it with food (sometimes even when he did). Of the two problems, that was the easier one to solve.

Nate finally managed to find Eliot's duffel bag and pulled the medkit out, tossing the bag back in the pile of luggage for Parker to rearrange and poke through to her heart's content once they got back to the van.

"You want one or two?" Nate opened the kit and sorted through the neatly labeled bottles.

"Just one," Eliot was slumped back against the headrest again, eyes closed.

"You're out of Zofran," Nate shook the empty bottle.

"I gave the last of it to Sophie when we hit that patch of turbulence on the way in for the job," Eliot said dismissively, "it's fine. I'll refill it later."

Nate handed the pill and another water bottle over to Eliot, then texted Parker and asked her to get a bottle of Zofran from the pharmacy. A little thievery would do her good after 8 hours on a plane.

Eliot took the pill, and the van went comfortably quiet aside from the rest of the team's chatter in Nate's ear. It was surprisingly relaxing to listen in on them doing something as mundane as arguing over pasta sauce and gummy frog brands. They were on the comms a lot, but during jobs, there was a certain amount of tension, the constant need to be assessing and reassessing everything that happened.

Nate didn't care what kind of pasta sauce they got, and he didn't like gummy frogs, but it was nice just to sit back and listen to them be together.

There was suddenly weight against his shoulder, and Nate held still as Eliot gradually slumped more heavily against him, eyes closed and breath even. Nate waited until he was sure he was settled before shifting to get an arm around him and stop him from sliding down too far. Eliot fidgeted in his sleep for a moment, then relaxed with a soft sigh.

It wasn't that unusual for Eliot to sleep around them, but after how keyed up he had been at the airport, having him resting solid and relaxed against his side felt like winning.


End file.
